Case Studies
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Network Infrastructure, Multiple Server Upgrade and Office Relocation for Cavanna Group Ltd Background Cavanna Homes was first established in 1923 when Philip Cavanna moved to Torquay from Watford bringing with him a wealth of building expertise and the slogan "Cavanna - Builders of Repute". Cavanna Homes began to grow into Torbay's foremost building company. The 1960's and 1970's saw further growth as the company focused solely on house building, to sell in excess of 100 homes per year for the first time. The past few years have seen renewed expansion and investment in the firm, and the Cavanna Group of companies are now actively involved in housing projects throughout the Westcountry, making us the largest independent house builder in the region. In addition, Cavanna have diversified and expanded into other areas, with retail, office and employment projects already under way, in addition to the many house building developments that form the basis for the company's success. Cavanna have certainly come a long way since 1923 with a multi-million pound turnover, a major building programme and a well deserved reputation for building good homes. Yet the company firmly remains a family business which is still committed to the principles of quality and consideration that it was founded with. The Challenge Cavanna were looking into relocating from their Torquay based office into a brand new purpose built office based on the outskirts of Torquay – The new office would allow for growth and expansion. The current infrastructure of Cavanna was based around a 10/100 switched network and 2 servers, the primary domain controller was a 6 year old Compaq Proliant server running Windows NT Server 4.0 and a UNIX based application server for their COINS construction management software. The current Telecoms solution had no integration into the computer network. There was currently only a 56k dial-up modem configured for remote access and internet/email access for Cavanna was through a single channel ISDN router. There were still some workstations running Microsoft Windows 98 SE. The initial plan was to upgrade the servers/workstations and network/telecoms infrastructure at the same time as the office relocation. The timeframe proposed for the above was to allow for minimum downtime. AME were involved in various project management meetings prior to the proposed date of relocation. The Solution AME have implemented two Gigabit network switches which provide a Gigabit backbone for the new servers. A new data comms cabinet was installed with 2 new rack mount HP Proliant ML370 servers. One of the new servers was loaded with Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Microsoft Exchange 2003 Server and configured as a domain controller. The 2nd new server was configured with Microsoft Windows 2003 Server as a member server for use as a document management server. The servers were configured prior to the office relocation to maximise the amount of time available for the weekend installation. Two new ADSL lines were installed at the new offices, the first for Internet and Email usage using a 8Mb downstream and 256kb upstream link, the second was for dedicated remote VPN access using a 8Mb downstream and 812kb upstream. We also migrated Cavanna’s internet account and domain name to a different ISP over this weekend. The remaining workstations running Windows 98 SE were replaced with Windows XP Professional workstations. All data was migrated to the new servers and all 60 workstations were reconfigured to the new domain, this included various other software upgrades all implemented over the same weekend. Various domain group policies were introduced to standardise many of the workstation specific settings. The existing NT4 server was then reloaded with Windows 2003 Server for use as a Routing and Remote Access Server for VPN usage. The entire solution was implemented over a weekend working 14 hour days to ensure that by Monday morning the users would be able to function normally in their new office. The infrastructure was also put in place for their IP based telephony system to be installed over the same weekend. The Benefits This solution has provided the Cavanna Group Ltd. with a core network infrastructure which both meets their current performance needs and provides room for expansion in the future. Converging their data and voice networks will allow the Cavanna Group Ltd to remove their costly PBX based phone system, providing them with considerable cost savings in the future. |
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